Christmas in the Hospital

Abby’s first Christmas wasn’t what we expected. The Thursday before Christmas, Abby had a check up with the doctor to check on her thrush. Her regular pediatrician was out and we had to see someone else in her office. I asked the nurse to check Abby’s temperature because I thought she felt warm, the nurse put her hand on Abby’s forehead and said she felt fine, so I just went with it! They checked her mouth and sent us home with more medicine.

Later that day I brought Abby over to Robin’s house because I had to go to my six week check up (can’t believe it’s been six weeks already!) When I picked up Abby, Robin said she slept the whole time, I figured she was tired from a long morning at the doctors, but when she slept the rest of the afternoon and evening, I got worried. She was still eating and happy when she was awake, so we gave her a bath and put her to bed early. When she woke up for her 5:00 AM feeding, she was burning up.
I took her temp and it was 102.3 I then took off her blankets and her pj’s and fed her hoping she would cool down. When she was done she still had a 102 temp. We called the pediatrician and they had us immediately bring her in.

Our doctor was still out, so we ended up getting to go to Dr. McKercher, who ended up being a blessing for us as he was a very kind and

compassionate doctor. He examined Abby and then he first explained why he had to do the things they where going to do next.

Abby had to go through some tests to rule out three major things, Meningitis, RSV, and infection. I immediately started crying when he told us what some of the tests where. She had to have a spinal tap, a catheter, and her blood taken, then she had to be spent to the hospital for more tests and observation. Dr. McKercher several times reassured us and told us he was happy we where attentive and noticed everything right away, as it could have gotten a lot worse.

At the Hospital Abby had to have an IV put in, she also had to have a x-ray, and a couple more blood tests. We slowly got back tests results, the Meningitis came back negative, and the RSV came back negative, but she came back positive for an infection. She had a kidney infection caused by a bladder infection. After we found this out, Abby had to have more test to find out why a newborn was getting a bladder/kidney infection. After several hours of worry we found out her kidneys where working fine. There is one more test to check for – but this test she can not have for another few weeks, because if they do this test too early it could cause her kidney to be infected again. If this test comes back ok too, then it was just a bladder infection, that sometimes little girls can get.

We spent 4 days in the hospital, I spent every night with Abby. It was very hard having Abby spend her first Christmas in the hospital, but we feel so blessed that she is doing ok, and that it was just an infection that is being treated by heavy antibiotics. Special thanks to all of our family and friends who came and brought Christmas to Abby in the hospital.
Abby is doing much better now, and is on antibiotics at home until they can do the second test that needs to be done. She has a check ups twice a week to make sure the infection is staying away.